From down home...

This is the doorway of the barn on property that adjoined some of our farm...we rented the house that this barn belongs to in our younger years.  The house burned down a couple years or so ago...and everything is just so grown up it did not even feel like home.  Always before, when I would go up there it involved a certain amount of heart ache...this time I guess it still did.  But more in the form of heartache that things have changed so much.  The barn is falling apart....and it is full of junk.

When young, our family raised the tobacco allotment to this place....raised it on the halves.  They supplied fertilize, seed for the tobacco bed and all that included, and we supplied the labor.  Some of my earliest memories are of going there to grade tobacco.  I was too little to do anything much at all, and can remember my mom setting me in hay and telling me to be good.  And it was loose hay.

And out the road just a bit is a spring house, and we had milk sitting in it to stay cool for dinner.  And I think we had bologna sandwiches...I do not know how they washed their hands, unless it was in the water running from the spring, or else, just kept the wax paper around the sandwich while they ate.

In case you have never been around tobacco...when you grade it, your hands get this sticky, yukky tar like substance on it...and it is hard to get off, and very bitter to the taste if you happen to have it on your hands and try to eat something without washing good.
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I did more laundry yesterday.  Funny, when I hang out laundry, it makes everything seem alright with the world.  Even if just for a little bit.  It is something that  is calming for me.

And I have been trying to get started quilting...yesterday I prepared my machine.  Cleaned all the lent out, oiled it, and also experimented with this thread I had gotten.  I will not name brands, but is is one of the higher priced ones...and it is the second time for it to be almost impossible to quilt with.  I got to looking and had some King Tut thread from Superior threads...in the color that I needed and it just sews like a dream.  I just fall in love with this thread every time I use it.

Then I had to change color, and this time I went to Aurifil....really expecting to need to change something if only a little bit, but in my testing it, it sews just great.   Which I didn't expect it not to sew, but thought with it being slightly heavier that I might need to adjust the tension.  I have always had good luck with Aurifil, too.

Well, it is back to work for me...got to make decisions about how to continue the quilting.  Wish me luck!